To Whom it May Concern
by misinmyname
Summary: Orihime writes a letter to send off in a bottle, detailing the little-known persona that is her inner grown-up. This is Ichihime, but it's weird... beware, you may hate me for it. I was feeling angsty when I wrote it.


To Whom it May Concern:

Goodbye is such a horrible word. Not horrible, so much... maybe fickle. Hypocritical. Self-defeating.

Goodbyes are simply too painful. They are too final.

I knew it was inevitable. I knew that I was not worth loving. He simply proved me right. Really, I should be thanking me—at least he never deceived me, never said that he loved me any more than he did, never used me, as many a man would have.

I hate goodbyes. I hate the word. How can a permanent departure be a good thing? Permanent departures denied any hope of reconciliation, redemption, between the two parties. If two people leave one another for the rest of their lives while hating each other, they never have the change to fix what went wrong. There is not even any hope for the two of them.

Byes are never good. Never, in all the time that I have lived and experienced byes, have they ever been good, nor can I convince myself that they ever will be.

When my brother died, it wasn't good.

When he came back in his attempt to kill me, only to be stopped by _him_, it wasn't good.

When she was forced to her own execution, it wasn't good.

When I was forced away from them, it wasn't good.

All of the byes, the departures, that I have gone through. None of them have ever been good.

This one, though, may well have been the worst.

I knew that he would leave. I knew that he didn't love me. High school crushes, after all, are not known for their longevity or their unconditional endurance. I suppose I knew, somewhere in the back of my head, that it was nothing more that what every other girl in the world has gone through since the first girl was ever rejected by a boy, a man that she saw something admirable in.

I accept this bye. Not as something good, but as something inevitable. I try to take it as a lesson, a challenge to lead me on my way to the future of my adult life. I tell myself that I am strong, and can handle anything that comes my way. I tell myself that there was nothing I could have done, and I know that I'm being completely honest with my reflection. There was nothing that I could have done. If he didn't love me, then he didn't love me, and that was that.

I could live without his love.

I couldn't live without him. At least I didn't think that I could. I had been with him in one way or another for so long, there was no other feasible option in my mind but to continue on with him, if not at my side than at least within my sight.

But he left. He grew up, moved on from this pathetic, materialistic existence that teenagers call their lives. He became a good person, a person that people besides me could respect.

And I didn't die. I didn't even come close to dying, no matter what I had expected.

I smiled for him when he left. You know, the big, stupid, teeth taking up half of my face kind of grin that makes most people who see it laugh, as they know you are faking it. But they thought that I was faking it because my real smile was so much worse, not because I didn't want to smile in the first place, or maybe even be there. I didn't want to accept him leaving.

It was a bye, but it certainly wasn't even close to being good for the parties involved. But that's a lie, and I know it, and so do you, my anonymous reader, whoever you may be.

Maybe you're an American. Wouldn't that be amazing, if this letter in an empty Rimune bottle made it all the way across an ocean to America. And maybe you can actually read what I'm writing, or maybe you'll find someone who can. Or maybe you'll just throw this away.

Or maybe it won't land anywhere at all, and will just sink to the bottom of the ocean, maybe killing a fish or two on the way down to its final resting place.

I know how life is. I know how hard it is to accept that things change. I hate byes, how utterly un-good they are. I hate myself for not being able to move on.

But I know, somehow, that I will move on some day. One day, and it may have happened by the time you read this letter, or maybe for several months after, I won't have to cry myself to sleep at night knowing what I lost. One day, I'll wake up and smile at myself in the mirror, for real.

I know that what I felt for him was real. I know because of how much it hurt when I couldn't have those feelings anymore. Anything that causes so much pain has to be real. In a way, pain is what makes anything and everything real.

I would be so happy if nothing was real, and if nothing caused pain. I would be so content, right now, to live in a world that was in suspended animation, nothing tangible, only a wave of comfort, an aura of pleasantness. And I am weak, so weak that I want that world, the one that is happy.

People are not strong. They smile for others, put on a show, because they are weak, and can't imagine the thought of anyone seeing that weakness. I put on my big, dorky smile for him when he left because a part of me didn't want him to come back. A part of me wanted the bye to be bad, so that it wouldn't be a goodbye. And it is that part of that writes this letter now.

I refuse to say goodbye. I will never say it again. There are synonyms, words that are far better for the purpose that "goodbye". At least, they are far better for my purposes.

I hope that somebody reads this. Or maybe I don't. Maybe I truly wish for this to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

It doesn't matter. I'm sending this missive off in my empty Rimune bottle, and I'm leaving its fate to chance. Do with it as you will.

Farewell,

Me.

I. O.


End file.
